Girls Just Wanna Watch Porn

It’s not only male rock stars who watch porn on tour buses and make out with fans. The Donnas are four women who date their groupies and sing about their sexual conquests with as much unapologetic abandon as the guys do. We asked the band, who’ve just released their appropriately raucous new album, Gold Medal, to share their rules for survival as an all-girl rock gang.

1: DO keep your cool around the cops.“We were driving across the French border into Italy in this little tiny van and we got pulled over,” says bassist Maya Ford (a.k.a., Donna F). “They were yelling, ‘Everyone out of the van!’ I had a piece of hash in my pocket, so I pulled it out real fast and just threw it. They pushed me against the van and yelled ‘heroin!’ at me. Eventually they took some money and let us go, but I was really scared. I was like, ‘I’m going to jail in France and I won’t be able to play any more shows!'”

2: DO score with everyone: fans, crew, the opening band….“No one is off-limits,” says singer Brett Anderson (Donna A). “Tours are only six weeks, which isn’t really enough time to get something going.” Adds Ford: “I’ve gone out with a guitar tech. And I’ve made out with the opening band-the whole band. I was having a make-out contest that tour. And I date fans. I went out with a superfan for a year!”

3: DON’T feed the DJ.“We have a lot of problems with DJs who think they’re Howard Stern,” says Anderson. “They’ll ask horribly degrading questions about our personal hygiene and if we shower together-stuff they would never ask a guy band. We have a tactic: When someone asks something like that, we just don’t say anything, so they get dead air. We did it at a radio station in Portland because they asked if we get our periods at the same time. Then they stopped playing us. It sucks to lose airplay over some stupid jock asking you some jock question.”

4: DO keep the bus clean, but not too clean.“We need a couple of days off in our bus to just sit in our pajamas all day and watch movies,” says Ford. Adds Anderson: “We keep the bus pretty clean, but there’s some porn involved. They have great porn in Europe. Sweden has the best-the movies actually have plots!”

5: DON’T strip down on command.“I think a photographer once asked me to lick [guitarist] Allison’s [Robertson] face,” says Anderson. “For an instant, you consider it because they’re the photographer. But then you realize, ‘I don’t have to do what they say just because they have a camera!'” Adds drummer Torry Castellano (Donna C): “They say things like, ‘How about you guys all sit on a bed in your bras? That would be cool!’ Would they ask the Strokes to strip down to their boxers and hang out on a bed together?”

6: DO dedicate songs to your ex-boyfriends.“Your exes show up and you’re like, ‘This one’s for Bo!'” says Ford. “Then they come up after the show and are like, ‘So you wanna hook up?’ And you’re like, ‘Didn’t you listen to that song I just dedicated to you? Didn’t you hear the lyric where I said you wet your bed and you’re a fucking idiot?'”

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